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US Broadband: Still No ISP Choice For Many, Especially at Higher Speeds (arstechnica.com)
Despite things getting better with adoption -- however slow -- of Google Fiber in several regions of the United States, the broadband market has gotten slightly less competitive since 2013, says a new report from the FCC. The report adds that, as a result, Americans still have little choice of high-speed broadband providers (PDF). From an ArsTechnica report: At the FCC's 25Mbps download/3Mbps upload broadband standard, there are no ISPs at all in 30 percent of developed census blocks and only one offering service that fast in 48 percent of the blocks. About 55 percent of census blocks have no 100Mbps/10Mbps providers, and only about 10 percent have multiple options at that speed. At the 10Mbps/1Mbps threshold -- which captures slower DSL technology in addition to cable and fiber -- about 90 percent of census blocks have at least two providers. These numbers exclude satellite, which is available nearly everywhere but has high latency and often low data caps. Even these numbers overstate the amount of competition, because an ISP might offer service to only part of a census block. The percentage of households with choice is thus even lower.
There's a good reason for this - broadband infrastructure is crazy expensive to build. Some of the incumbents received big government subsidies to build their systems, but those days are gone and new companies can't compete. If they stole customers from the incumbents everyone would go bankrupt because nobody can afford to build these systems and only pick up a fraction of the homes passed as customers. We need to have the government build the infrastructure once, and then lease space on it to any ISP who wants to compete. It's the only way that makes any sense and the only way that will ever allow any form of competition in this space.
From their perspective they should not. Which is exactly why, from a consumer perspective, the FCC needs to regulate ISP's to ensure that a reasonable level of competition exists in the market.
most 3rd world countries have blazing fast internet for super cheap (at least in the big cities)
It's not illegal at all - how do you think Verizon is rolling out FiOS? If you wanted to launch the Raymorris Cable Company, and deploy service in NYC, you could certainly do so, provided you (a) could show you had sufficient financial backing to be a viable concern, and (b) agreed to cover at least a large portion of the city, if not all, and weren't just going to cherry-pick affluent neighborhoods.
It's not illegal at all - how do you think Verizon is rolling out FiOS? If you wanted to launch the Raymorris Cable Company, and deploy service in NYC, you could certainly do so, provided you (a) could show you had sufficient financial backing to be a viable concern, and (b) agreed to cover at least a large portion of the city, if not all, and weren't just going to cherry-pick affluent neighborhoods.
Oh, you mean like Google, who is being fought at every turn, by incumbent carriers as it seeks to expand into those underserved markets. I'll say it, Internet service is a utility. It should be treated as such and regulated as such. There a many ways to do this, some better than others. If we look at electricity, for example, the public utility model is demonstrably the best. The operators of the utility are beholden to the ratepayers/electorate, not stockholders, and that makes all the difference in the world.
Sure, they're not exactly taking over, but they have helped expose some of the lies. For example, the ISPs would have us believe they're absolutely gutted that they can't possibly offer faster connections or raise their data caps even one iota or they'll go broke. Then as soon as Google announces their expansion into the area, the laws of physics change and they start offering an order of magnitude faster connections and triple the data limit.